Neuroscience
Neuroscience is a field that is devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system. Such studies may include the structure, function, development, genetics, biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, and pathology of the nervous system. Traditionally it is seen as a branch of biological sciences. However, recently there has been a convergence of interest from many allied disciplines, including psychology, computer science, statistics, physics, and medicine. The scope of neuroscience has now broadened to include any systematic scientific experimental and theoretical investigation of the central and peripheral nervous system of biological organisms. The methodologies employed by neuroscientists have been enormously expanded, from biochemical and genetic analysis of dynamics of individual nerve cells and their molecular constituents to imaging representations of perceptual and motor tasks in the brain. Neuroscience is at the frontier of investigation of the brain and mind. The study of the brain is becoming the cornerstone in understanding how we perceive and interact with the external world and, in particular, how human experience and human biology influence each other. The scientific study of the nervous systems underwent a significant increase in the second half of the twentieth century, principally due to revolutions in molecular biology, neural networks and computational neuroscience. It has become possible to understand, in exquisite detail, the complex processes occurring inside a single neuron and in a network that eventually produces the intellectual behavior, cognition, emotion and physiological responses. The task of neural science is to explain behavior in terms of the activities of the brain. How does the brain marshal its millions of individual nerve cells to produce behavior, and how are these cells influenced by the environment...? The last frontier of the biological sciences--their ultimate challenge--is to understand the biological basis of consciousness and the mental processes by which we perceive, act, learn, and remember. :— Eric Kandel, Principles of Neural science, fourth edition The nervous system is composed of a network of neurons and other supportive cells (such as glial cells). Neurons form functional circuits, each responsible for specific tasks to the behaviors at the organism level. Thus, neuroscience can be studied at many different levels, ranging from molecular level to cellular level to systems level to cognitive level. At the molecular level, the basic questions addressed in molecular neuroscience include the mechanisms by which neurons express and respond to molecular signals and how axons form complex connectivity patterns. At this level, tools from molecular biology and genetics are used to understand how neurons are born and die, and how genetic changes affect biological functions. The morphology, molecular identity and physiological characteristics of neurons and how they relate to different types of behavior are also of considerable interest. (The ways in which neurons and their connections are modified by experience are addressed at the physiological and cognitive levels.) At the cellular level, the fundamental questions addressed in cellular neuroscience are the mechanisms of how neurons process signals physiologically and electrochemically. They address how signals are processed by the dendrites, somas and axons, and how neurotransmitters and electrical signals are used to process signals in a neuron. At the systems level, the questions addressed in systems neuroscience include how the circuits are formed and used anatomically and physiologically to produce the physiological functions, such as reflexes, sensory integration, motor coordination, emotional responses, learning and memory, etc. In other words, they address how these neural circuits function and the mechanisms through which behaviors are generated. For example, systems level analysis addresses questions concerning specific sensory and motor modalities: how does vision work? How do songbirds learn new songs and bats localize with ultrasound? The related field of neuroethology, in particular, addresses the complex question of how neural substrates underlies specific animal behavior. At the cognitive level, cognitive neuroscience addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the neural circuitry. The emergence of powerful experimental techniques such as neuroimaging (e.g.,fMRI,PET, SPECT), electrophysiology and human genetic analysis allows neuroscientists to address abstract questions such as how human cognition and emotion are mapped to specific neural circuitries. Many mental processes previously thought to be beyond scientific understanding have been shown to have robust neural correlates. Neuroscience is also beginning to become allied with social sciences, and burgeoning interdisciplinary fields of neuroeconomics, decision theory, social neuroscience are starting to address some of the most complex questions involving interactions of brain with environment. Neuroscience generally includes all scientific studies involving the nervous system. Psychology, as the scientific study of mental processes, may be considered a sub-field of neuroscience, although some mind/body theorists argue that the definition goes the other way — that psychology is a study of mental processes that can be modeled by many other abstract principles and theories, such as behaviorism and traditional cognitive psychology, that are independent of the underlying neural processes. The term neurobiology is sometimes used interchangeably with neuroscience, though the former refers to the biology of nervous system, whereas the latter refers to science of mental functions that form the foundation of the constituent neural circuitries. Neurology and Psychiatry are medical specialties and are generally considered, in academic research, subfields of neuroscience that specifically address the diseases of the nervous system. These terms also refer to clinical disciplines involving diagnosis and treatment of these diseases. Neurology deals with diseases of the central and peripheral nervous systems such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and stroke, while psychiatry focuses on mental illnesses. The boundaries between the two have been blurring recently and physicians who specialize in either generally receive training in both. Both neurology and psychiatry are heavily involved in and influenced by basic research in neuroscience. External links * High-Resolution Cytoarchitectural Primate Brain Atlases * Society for Neuroscience * Neural Plasticity-Open Access Journal (Hindawi Publishing) * Neuroscience. 2nd ed. by Purves et al (online textbook) * Neuroscience for Kids